More Wages

f N the last of a series of three articles exposing

Implement Trusts Can Pay

the

irresponsible

plice-raising and

wage-cutting practices of the giant implement monopolies, Mr. Campbell proves that
Massey-Harris, Cockshutt Plow, International Harvester and other great combines can
easily afford to pay decent wages and give cheaper machinery.

machinery and implement
: monopoly has travelled far
since 1839 when Ebenezer Frost
began to manufacture plows at
Smiths Falls, Ontario, for the
farmers of the vicinity. His
neighborly kindness secon built up_
the firm of Frost and Wood
which later became the Harves-
ter division of the Cockshutt Plow
Company.

When John Harris and Daniel
Massey built their modest little
factories away back in 1846 where
they rubbed shoulders with their
workmen, they little dreamed that
some day their inventions in ag-
ricultural implements would grow
into a giant octopus—the source
of mortgages, monopoly farm
prices, high interest rates, low
wages, and Mr. J- S. Duncan’s
tiresome speeches.

But the day of monopoly mers-
ers dawned and the fiscal and
trade policies of the Canadian
governments which permit steel
drawbacks, tariffs, and special
cencessions to mecnopolists made
it easy. z

Monopoly‘s Growth
Pe 189i the Massey-Harris Com-
pany gobbled the combined
business of Patterson Brothers
and Company, and the J. ©. Wis-
mer Company, then the Verity
Plow Company. In 1892 the Dise
Harrow followed the same fate;
in 1895 the “squeezers” were put
on the Bain Wagon Company
and it was hi-jacked. In 1904
Massey-Harris went into the busi-
mess of spreading manure—the
Kemp manure spreader was pur-
chased. in 1910 Massey-Harris
turned its attention to the John-
ston Harvester Company of Ba-
tavia, New York, and its name
disappeared from the doorplate.
In 1913 the Deyo-Macey engine
Was encircled, followed by the
acquiring of the J. E. Case Com-
pany.

OQne merger after another.
Hand yourself over peacefully or
be ruined and squeezed out —
one or the other. Wherever farm-
ers could be robbed or farm
equipment workers exploited,
there went the monopoly, crush-
ing all opposition through “mar-
ket cornering” underselling and
Sabotage. Flach little competition
was bought up. The day of the
little workshop and handmade
Machinery was on its way out.
in its place grew the gigantic

monopoly, the Massey-Harris
Company, which dominated the
industry. Its counterpart in the ~

United States was the Interna-
tional Harvester Company.

Part of Cartel

WASS22 4281s is the largest
Manufacturer of farm imple-
ments in the British Empire and
Part of a world cartel It oper-
ates plants in the United States,
Australia, France and Germany,
and will now have a plant in
England. It exports to all parts
of the world. Tt belongs to the
pewerful combine known as the
Harvester Trust, which has a
long black record of fighting
unionization with blackjacks, riot
sticks, tear 88S and machine—
Suns, ever since May 3, 1886, when
the striking. workers of McCor-
mick Reaper Works were attack-
ed by police.
: But history has a way of deal-
ing with reactionary capitalist
bosses and recently the workers
of the International Harvester
Company of the United States,
after a long and bitter strugele,

PACIFIC TRIBUNE — PAGE 10

forced wage increases from the
implement monopolies.

In Canade, the United Auto-
mobile Workers’
manded a 40-hour work week,
a $2 a2 day wage increase, and
two weeks’ vacation with pay.

if workers and farmers were
to believe the speeches of J. S.

Duncan, president Massey-Harris
Company, and Publisher McCor-
mick of the International Har-

vester Company, the wage in-
ereases aren’t DOSUD IS: But are
they ?

CAMPBELL

A. C.

Highest Profits

APITALISM in Canada is a

highly organized monopoly.
And in fact pep capita the rate
of profit in Canada is one of
the world’s highest. It is one of
the features of Canadian econ-
omy that the present-day monop-
clies took over the traditions*and
business methods of the fur-trade
and railway steal periods.’ The
implement monopolies have done
well and can afford to pay higher
wages.

Hven in the days of acute de-

pression when the implement
monopolies showed a “Door
mouth” to all government in-

vestigations it was revealed that
while the monopolies paid low
wases and charged high prices
they stored away hidden “re-
serves.”

They did double bookkeeping to
€vade taxation, and the practice
of cheating farmers and work-
ers became an exact science.

During the period of the “Hun-
gry Thirties” when the farmer
Was patching up old machinery
and was unable to buy new im-
plements, the implement monop-
olies found ways to profit on his

impoverishment. “What they
lost on the roundabouts, they
made up on the Bostons.”

Boosted Prices

"THEY boosted the price of parts,

whick were sold strictly for
cash. The companies admitted 4
substantial mark-up in the cost
of parts as compared with the
cost of the implements made up
of the same parts.

A binder Selling at $262, would
cost a total of $592 if bought in
parts. A manure spreader, sell-
ing for $164 complete would cost
$279. A mower worth $93 would
cost $176, while a dise drill would
cost $419.49 a. compared with the

Union has de—

price of $259 for a new machine.
The excess mark-up over and
above the mark-up on the fin-
ished implement was 65 to 70
Percent in some cases. Such
profits are hard to find in the
books. On top of that the 1938-39
Saskatchewan inquiry proved
that farmers buying a binder on
@ half cash basis were forced to
pay 33.8 percent interest.

it was further proved many,
times over and more recently in
the current harvester strike that
labor costs take only a small part
of the price of farm machinery.

At the Saskatchewan Inguiry
cost figures of an 8-foot binder
were quoted to show the 1913
price was $167.02 of which
amount $11.97 was labor costs.
The 1936 price was $281 of which

$22.62 was labor cost. In other
words, the price had increased
by $114, but labor costs had only
increased $10:65. The same ratio
obtains today in all fields of
farm machinery and implements.

@he actual cost of a binder in
1936 was $130.15 and the machine
sold to the Regina farmer for
$281.

Enormous Profits
[- 1933, a year of hardship to

Canadian farmers, and exces-
Sively low wages to implement
workers, Massey-Harris made (in
Canada alone) a clear profit of
over $1,000,000. Cockshutt Plow
Company very modestly reported
2 clear profit of $708,437. But
this latter looked like small pick-
ings compared with the returns
of the
Company, which also operates in
Canada.

This octopus reported 34,000
Shareholders received $14,000,000
in dividends in 1938. What the

international Harvester 2

By A. C. Campbell

report did not disclose was that
nine giant stockholders owned 36
percent of the common stock and
20 percent of the preferred Stock.
During the years 193641939 the
nine received a total of $17,000.-
000 in dividends. From 1929 to
1939 the stockholders of this com-
pany had received $140,000,000 or
an average of $14,000,000 a year.
The IHC claimed that 33 per-
cent of the gross receipts during
that 10 years was paid in salaries,
wages and the like. Lhe report
Gf the American government
trade commission for practically
the same period showed the labor
costs amounted to only 10 per-
cent. The stockholders drew
$6,000,000 more in dividends in
1937 than in the boom year of
1929. :
Today a glance at the profits
of the farm implement monopo-

lies will soon prove they can af-
ford to pay-decent wages and give
cheaper machinery.

Se iin i in inn iinet er

Zero Hour

manded the right to organize.
MacMillan _ may have forgotten
the Chamber-of-Gommerce sub-
Sidized and inspired Vigilante
movement that burned and
wrecked union halls, that ter-
rorized union organizers . . .
even murdered them, as in the
case of Wesley Everett in Cen-
tralia, Wash, and Rossval and
Voutilainen in the Ontario
Thunder Bay logging camps in
31928.

The great International Wood-
workers of America has done a
job of unionization in the camps
and mills of BCG _. - 2 job that
MacMillan and his breed do not
like. They cannot smash the
TWA with the Same technique
they used in the decades follow-
ing World War 1; so they be-
come “democrats” defend-
ing the right of a worker 4
not te belong to a union. Some.
“democrats.”

e@

Stuart Research echoes Mac-
Millan when they deprecate the
Strike vote taken by the TW.4A.
They cannot see that the mag-
ificent unity and solidarity
which marked the 100 percent
response to the TWA strike call
by scores of hundreds of non-
union camp and mill workers,
and who, during the first days
of the strike, joined the union
by the hundreds, is in itself
the greatest referendum vote of
all, endorsing the program of
the IWA, which is the program
of every Canadian worker. That
vote and that democratic work-
ing class unity is what the boss
loggers and their hired Word
Haw Haw—the Stuart Research
—would like to destroy.

@

Stuart Research omits a lot
from its “keeping the record
Straight” propaganda. It omits
to tell the the public of the
number of accidents in the
camps and mills of B.C. For the
war years alone the accident
list of B.C. loggers and mill
workers exceeded those on the
beaches of Dunkirk. Stuart Re-
Search should take a look at
the records of the Workmen’s
Compensation Board .. . the
fatal accidents alone are high-
er than in any other Canadian
industry. This fact can not be
dissociated from the present
struggle, nor can it be set down
to carelessness on the part of
lumber and sawmill jworkers. It
results from measures which
the boss loggers should have
taken—but didn’t, because such

- deadline

measures might have meant a
wittle—a very little—reduction in
their profit balance sheets. Ob-
viously the death-rate in the
logging camps would not be
Suitable material for Stuart Re-
search in its objective of mis-
leading the public. In fact, there
is a great volume of factual in-
formation which “Stuart Re-
Search doesn’t give to the public
for obvious reasons. And had it
not been for the IWA the list
of killed and broken men would
have been much: higher.

The boss-loggers’ clamor for
a “ballot” on “their” offers to
the union; their raucous chant
about the “illegality” of the Strike,
aided in this by both federal
and provincial labor depart—
ments; their refusal to nego-
tiate, .first, “unless the strike
is cancelled” and now
“unless the strike is calleq off’;
their Suave appeals (on the
radio) to wives of loggers and
millworkers, on how much they
(the wives) are losing — how
much they must suffer need-
lessly, because their husbands
ere on strike; all of this shows
that the main tactic is aimed
at weakening the morale of the

Strikers, of hoping to drive a
wedge between the TWA and its
leaders.

That will not happen. The
men and women who constitute
the TWA know that their strug-
gle is a just one. They know
that im the struggle for higher
wages, the 40-hour working
week and union security, that
every trade union and workings
man and woman in Ganada is
behind them, precisely because
the fight of the TWA is their
fight also.

The shout of “the strike is
illegal” has a phoney ring; the
patriotism of the TWA was de-
monstrated by the men of its
ranks who fought on all the
war fronts and by those who
died for the just principles and
demands of the union they built.
it was demonstrated by a “no-
Strike” pledge, Strictly adhered
te in the interests of victory
over fascism. Tt is demonstrated
now in a solid picket line in
every camp and mill, a picket
line which visualizes the Peace
in a prosperous Canada, implicit
in the wuiversal demand for
higher wasges—a 40-hour week—
and union security.

Wanted-A Foreign

Policy For Peace

(#rom the LPP Draft Resolution)

The foreign policy pursued by the Canadian govern-

ment since the war coincides

in all its essential features

.

with that of the would-be wreckers of the peace.

What should Canada’s foreign
Policy be?

It should be a policy that will
strengthen peace—not one that
weakens it. It should be based
Squarely on the principles and
aims of the United Nations
Charter. It should be a policy
that aligns Canada not with the
old, reaction-laden camp of de-
Caying imperialism, but with the
new, upSurging forces of popu-
lar democracy that have emerg-
ed from the anti-fascist war.

AS against the present sub-
serviency which makes of Can-
ada a satellite of Anglo-Ameri-
can imperialism, the people of
Canada must insist upon a2 com-
plete break with the atomic di-

Plomacy now practised by the
Canadian government, hich
can lead only to catastrophe. As
one of the foremost of the
middle powers, Canada should
five active leadership in worlk-
ing to restore the close, fruit-

ful unity which gave birth to
the United Nations, and which
is now being jeopardized by.
the organizers of the “atomic
bloc.” Canada should
the strongest advocate of plac-
ing the control of atomic ener-
Sy and the atom bomb in the
hands of the U.N. Security
Council. Our entire foreign pol-
icy should be directed to make
peace secure throughout the
world.

become

FRIDAY, MAY 24, 1946